January 26, 2022
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0Must Read: Top Crypto Billionaires and Their Projects
No one has benefited more from the pandemic than the holders of cryptocurrencies. Almost $1 trillion is the estimated total value of all digital coins.
Learn more about the best coins to mine right now here.
Given such a surge in popularity, we decided to calculate the fortunes of the richest investors and entrepreneurs in the field of cryptocurrencies, taking into account the value of their digital and traditional assets.
Therefore, today we introduce you to the richest crypto billionaires and their projects.
Previously, we’ve prepared a list of countries with no crypto tax. You can read about them here.
Crypto billionaires and their projects
CEO of Binance and BijieTech
Net capital: $96 billion
The founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange has returned to the billionaires’ club. The global growth of investments in cryptocurrency has increased the valuation of Binance, in which Zhao owns about a 30% stake. But what exactly was the driving force?
The exchange’s own coin, Binance Coin (BNB), quickly gained momentum after falling to about $13 in March. However, the catalyst was really the launch of the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), which changed the usefulness of the token.
BSC is an ecosystem of decentralized financing (DeFi) and smart contracts aimed at solving the problems of bandwidth and high fees faced by users of the Ethereum blockchain.
Thanks to the use of BNB as the main token in the Binance Smart Chain, the coin exploded like a rocket. Now there are a huge number of smart contracts and applications interacting with Binance Coin. They offer almost the same functionality, only cheaper and faster.
Now the fortune of Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the Binance crypto exchange, amounts to $96 billion. This makes him the richest person in the world of cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg calculated. At the same time, it is possible that his fortune is even greater, since he owns crypto assets.
According to these calculations, Zhao is the 11th richest person in the world. Mukesh Ambani, the head of the Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, is on the 12th line in the rating of Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, and Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, is on the 10th.
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Founder of the company Alameda Research
Net capital: $22.5 billion
Bankman-Fried is the richest cryptocurrency billionaire. The 29-year-old graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded the wholesale company Alameda Research. In addition, he is also the creator of the FTX derivatives exchange. Bankman-Fried made headlines in 2020 thanks to a $5 million donation to a super PAC that supported Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
The fortune of the richest crypto millionaire has almost doubled after the closure of the FTX exchange’s $900 million funding round. Most of his fortune is associated with capital and FT tokens (FTT).
Co-founder of the Coinbase exchange
Net capital: $11.5 billion
Brian Armstrong entered the world of digital currency for the first time back in 2012, after he became one of the founders of the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange in San Francisco. It has become a direct crypto gateway for the Western market.
Coinbase has significant influence in the industry and offers a wide range of services, including trading and storing cryptocurrencies, and earning on an affiliate program.
Currently, Coinbase is valued at $10 billion, which makes it one of the most successful crypto companies.
The creator of Bitcoin
Net capital: $8-9 billion
Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person or group of people who developed the bitcoin cryptocurrency protocol and created the first version of the software in which this protocol was implemented. Several attempts have been made to uncover the real identity behind this name, but none of them have been successful.
It is believed that the mysterious creator of bitcoin controls about one million coins, most of which were mined in the earliest days of the cryptocurrency, when only a few programmers knew that it existed. Then the reward for the block was 50 BTC, and the complexity of mining was so low that even with the help of an average laptop, it was possible to engage in mining.
The Bitcoins that Nakamoto owns have never been spent or transferred. The current market value of these assets is now about $9 billion.
5. Chris Larsen
Co-founder of Ripple
Net capital: $6 billion
Larson is an American investor, known for creating several joint startups in Silicon Valley. In 1996, he co-founded the online mortgage lender E-Loan, and in 2006, he co-founded Prosper Marketplace, the world’s first peer-to-peer lending market, where he served as CEO.
Since 2012, he has co-founded Ripple Labs, Inc., where Larsen was CEO from 2015 to 2017 and is now chairman of the board. In addition to the company’s assets, it owns 5.2 billion XRP.
The only veteran on the list, the co-founder and chairman of Ripple has increased his fortune by $3.3 billion due to a sharp increase in the value of the XRP token, despite the ongoing litigation with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which accuses Ripple of violating the securities act.
6. Fred Ehrsam
Coinbase co-founder and former Goldman Sachs trader
Net capital: $3.5 billion
Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase with Armstrong in 2012. He left the company in 2017 but remains a member of the board of directors and also heads the cryptocurrency-focused investment firm Paradigm.
After graduating from Duke University in 2006, Ehrsam worked as an analyst at the international investment fund BlackRock, and later as a trader at one of the largest investment banks, Goldman Sachs. In 2012 he quit, launching the Coinbase crypto exchange with Brian Armstrong.
From 2012 to 2017, Ehrsam served as president of the company. During this time, the service attracted 13 million users and received an estimated $1.6 billion. At the end of 2017, Ehrsam left his post to pursue other crypto projects but continues to hold a seat on the board of Coinbase.
In 2018, Ehrsam, together with Matt Huang, who previously worked at Sequoia Capital, and Charles Noyes of Pantera Capital, founded and headed the venture firm Paradigm, which invests in blockchain startups. After the launch, Paradigm raised more than $400 million.
President of MicroStrategy
Net capital: $2.3 billion
The president of MicroStrategy, a software company, made and lost a fortune during the first dot-com crisis. Today, Saylor’s fortune is estimated at $2.3 billion. He managed to earn such a large fortune by buying bitcoins – both for himself and for his company. This move led to a sharp increase in the company’s shares listed on Nasdaq.
In addition to buying bitcoins in bulk, Saylor has another task – to educate the public. First, he organized a conference for the institution, where he explained to the representatives why it was worth converting reserves into BTC. Saylor’s program, dubbed “Bitcoin for Corporations,” has successfully attracted 8,197 participants from 6,917 different companies.
But that wasn’t enough for him. Soon after, the CEO launched a course for anyone who wants to understand Bitcoin’s logic and meaning. The course is free and can be viewed on the Saylor Academy platform, a non-profit organization created by Michael Saylor.
The Bitcoin for Everyone program consists of training videos designed for beginners, with a total duration of 12 hours. Everything is divided into 5 sections, and after completing the course and the final exam, the user receives a free certificate.
Founder of Digital Currency Group (DCG)
Net capital: $1.6 billion
Silbert’s fortune is linked to Digital Currency Group (DCG), a cryptocurrency conglomerate he founded in 2015. DCG shares include the cryptocurrency news service CoinDesk and the asset management company Grayscale.
Grayscale does not stand still. Recently, it has often appeared in media headlines, but not only because of serial, massive investments. The company is constantly creating new investment products and is open to new projects. For example, the company has recently launched five new investment funds. As a result, the number of the company’s products has increased to 14.
New cryptocurrencies include Chainlink, Filecoin, Livepeer, Basic Attention Token, and the Decentraland virtual reality world coin.
Recently, Greyscale also emphasized that ETFs are the target product of its cryptocurrency trust funds. The company explained that each of them has four life cycle stages.
The first is to launch a private placement of each trust. This is the state with the last five funds. Then they are publicly listed on the secondary market. At this stage, there are currently four funds of the company. GBTC and ETHE are already at the third stage – transformation into companies reporting to the SEC. In the end, at the fourth stage, all these trusts should become ETFs.
Learn how to earn money with cryptocurrency here.
